I’m so bad at birthdays.  I wasn’t always…I used to love having big celebrations and getting all gussied up to go out.  At one point though, I started absolutely dreading the idea of celebrating and feeling pressure to have the “perfect plan”.  And poor Alex always gets the brunt of my birthday blues.  Right around January, you can see his anxiety start to settle in because he only has a few months to figure out what the heck I want to do on my birthday (which is the hardest task) and then try to execute it. The poor guy must have presented me with a list of at least 25 different ideas we could do, and asked me on a daily basis which I wanted, but I just couldn’t commit to any of them.  For whatever reason, this year, nothing seemed all that exciting to me.  So we spent this birthday in what my old self would say, a very boring way.  We sat at our kitchen table eating my favorite homemade soup (thanks Dad!) while sipping some champagne and watching Leo sleep on the baby monitor.  This year, as I turn a year older, that little guy turns six months in what feels like the longest and quickest half-of-a-year of my life. And this year I didn’t need to have huge exciting birthday plans on my calendar because big birthday bashes and weekend getaways are fun, but knowing that I’ve got this little guy sleeping upstairs makes this the best birthday yet.